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'How-To' Isn't Everything

If you’re not also enabling the ‘why’ or ‘what’ behind the tech tools
you give your faculty, you’re not enabling effective use of those tools.

NEW HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE tools arrive on our
campuses carrying much hope for significant impact on
teaching and learning, productivity, or other aspects of
campus function. For faculty, these tools are made available
with (we hope!) some level of instruction which tends to be
technical or “how-to.” Much less likely is any direction about
the “why” behind the use of the tool, or enlightenment
about “what” might be done with the tools in order to
enhance learning. In other words, the IT instruction d'esn’t
involve striving for effective use of the tools—particularly
when it comes to technology that supports teaching and
learning. Yet, faculty development opportunities and support
for faculty to enhance teaching and learning with technology
are key pieces that need to be provided wherever
possible. So, let’s take a look at model-worthy faculty development
programs and approaches at various campuses.

Watch These Programs/Approaches

At the University of Missouri-Columbia, an annual Series
on Academic Transformation, coordinated by Educational
Technologies at Missouri (ET@MO), assists up to 10 faculty
member teams from departments interested in implementing
transformative change in one or more key courses.
This multifaceted approach includes project management
support, structured presentations and discussions for all
teams involved, one-on-one or team skill development and
support, and incentive monies to fund the needed resources
to accomplish team goals.

Throughout the year, an assigned liaison meets regularly
with team leaders, helping to refine team goals, identify
skills or resources needed to accomplish goals, and
smooth the pathway to other ET@MO staff or campus
departments that might also help support the transformation
process. Inspired by the National Center
for Academic Transformation’s Program in
Course Redesign,
ET@MO requests proposals where transformative
change involves sustainable educational
technologies coupled with pedagogical
practices to meet one or more goals: for
instance, meeting growing enrollment pressure
by creatively tapping resources with technology;
establishing and improving assessment
with technology; establishing interdisciplinary
teaching collaborations through technology;
meeting the needs of unique student populations
with technology; advancing the scholarship
of using technology to improve teaching
and learning; designing and implementing pervasive
(anytime/anywhere) technologies and
pedagogies; and internationalizing the curriculum
through the use of technology. (Click here for more information.)

At Florida State University, personal
response systems (aka PRS or “clickers”) are
used in the classroom to engage students in learning and provide instructors with immediate feedback.
(Students answer a few questions per class period from
questions embedded in the class PowerPoint presentations.)
Faculty development for use of the systems is provided
via a series of instructional videos created by J'e
Calhoun, lecturer in the Department of Economics and
assistant director of the Stavros Center for Economic Education.
This approach, used in place of standard face-toface
workshops, lets faculty review the materials as many
times as needed, at their own pace and convenience. A
“how-to” video is even provided for students and can be
linked to/from an instructor’s website. (The video approach
is used with other faculty development topics as well; click here.)

The University of Central Arkansas is using a Title III
grant to help infuse the instructional program with technology,
and to enhance the instructional technology skills of general
education faculty. While faculty from individual general
ed areas select the specific technologies that they want to
use, the Title III staff assumes primary responsibility for
designing and delivering the professional development program.
The program workshops emphasize the theoretical
and philosophical bases of the instructional approach and/or
the capabilities of the software/hardware; they also identify
essential skills needed for competency in integrating the
software capabilities into instructional approaches. An initial
basic workshop is followed by small group workshops with
participants categorized anywhere from novice to expert.
These targeted workshops ensure that participants actually
do have the capability to integrate the technology. After participants
complete the two stages, continuing support is
provided based upon individual needs and personal goals.
The model has been used successfully with a wide range of
technology, such as interactive whiteboards, tablet PCs, and
even the highly interactive DyKnow software.
(Click here to learn more.)

The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia
introduces faculty to classroom technology with an
open house at the start of the fall semester. The open house,
available all day on a walk-in basis, is held in classrooms that
are networked to each seat and feature ceiling projectors,
computers, and other devices. New faculty are especially
attracted to the sessions which allow them to speak with a
tech advocate in a non-threatening environment. Since the
sessions are held in the classrooms for the entire day, visitors
can stop by as schedules permit. Darden also conducts a
seminar once a year demonstrating the opportunities available
to its community using the collaborative software Adobe Breeze. Faculty are invited to attend and
learn about the features of Breeze Live and Breeze Presentation.
A tech advocate hosts the session; faculty and staff
who already use the technology share their experiences.
(Find out more here.)

The “Net Generation” is the topic of a faculty development
program at St. Lawrence University (NY). During the
school’s late-summer Back to Basics Technology Workshop
series, faculty are involved in a participatory seminar on the
Angel Learning Management Suite as the framework for a discussion on Digital Natives
and Net Generation learners. Workshop presenters ask faculty
to offer advice for academic success for Net Gen students
entering their classrooms that fall. After discussions
about how and why Angel works well for these students, faculty
are cut loose to begin work on their first Angel course
component. A course shell for each participant (created in
advance of the workshop) lets faculty begin work right away.
Many St. Lawrence faculty find this portion of the workshop
key to successfully launching a course in Angel the following
semester. Other Angel (and non-Angel) tools are topics of
additional workshops in the Back to Basics program and
other sessions available throughout the year. (For more information, click here.)

At Bloomsburg University (PA), Michael Ruffini, an assistant
professor in the Department of Educational Studies and
Secondary Education, uses e-courseMaps to create online
course outlines. He projects a visual “mind map” in front of a
room full of instructors who can immediately see all the
course elements and the relationships among those elements.
To help them create their own, he guides instructors
through the process of creating and gathering all their course
materials to make a map using Mindjet’s MindManager and Adobe’s Dreamweaver. Ruffini then shows
them how to use the map’s structure to create discrete modules
of instruction. He believes that mind mapping a course
will save time and also make faculty better instructional
designers because it lets them see, at a glance, how all their
course content elements relate to each other, as well as
pinpoint any information that may be missing. (See Ruffini’s
website.)